This multi-million dollar lawsuit that Nunes has filed in Virginia is just further proof the man is not to be taken seriously. He has decided, like many other insecure men and women in the public eye, that the best way to respond to critique is to sue them. The lawsuit is a half-assed attempt to scare the involved parties.
While I am not a lawyer, Gabriel Malor is, and he had some thoughts on the subject.
Suing Twitter and Liz Mair for $200 million is exactly what I'd expect a ding dong like Devin Nunes to do. In the lawsuit he claims that Twitter's failure to police mean memes, among other things, caused him "extreme pain and suffering." GTFOOH, ding dong.
— Friendly Gabriel Malor (@gabrielmalor) March 18, 2019
Here's the complaint. A lot of these don't sound like false statements of fact to me. Loootta opinion stuffed in here from, I don't even know how to describe them: meme accounts? mean accounts?
Gonna take a while to sort through. https://t.co/cLEsocThPh pic.twitter.com/QORmGi1RrA
— Friendly Gabriel Malor (@gabrielmalor) March 18, 2019
I had vaguely recalled this Nunes winery investment business, but had forgotten all the details. The Fresno Bee reported on it in a piece headlined: "A yacht, cocaine, prostitutes: Winery partly owned by Nunes sued after fundraiser event." https://t.co/QDp4gBq568
— Friendly Gabriel Malor (@gabrielmalor) March 18, 2019
The only defamations specifically alleged to be from Mair in the suit (it claims there are others, but doesn't specify them; see prior not well-pleaded comment) involve mentions of the winery investment and Fresno Bee story. pic.twitter.com/IacWby23G1
— Friendly Gabriel Malor (@gabrielmalor) March 18, 2019
In fact, the complaint specifically objects to a Mair tweet that is simply "HOLY CRAP" followed by the headline from the Fresno Bee and a link to the article. That ain't gonna work.
— Friendly Gabriel Malor (@gabrielmalor) March 18, 2019
Almost all of these aren't false statements of fact. It's counterproductive, I would think, to provide the public with a hyperconcentrated list of insults that by your own admission really, really bother you.
*Note: Nunes is also suing for insulting words/fighting words. pic.twitter.com/HCWP5pnvQa
— Friendly Gabriel Malor (@gabrielmalor) March 18, 2019
Nunes filed in Henrico County, Virginia (which is where Twitter has a service address), but, of course, the defendants could try and remove it to federal court if they wish.
Virginia has an anti-SLAPP law. It is not a very good one tho. https://t.co/oKmpjGTfhB
— Friendly Gabriel Malor (@gabrielmalor) March 18, 2019
There’s more in that thread but those tweets are the highlights (Note: “SLAPP” as mentioned in the last tweet refers to “strategic lawsuits against public participation,” meaning they serve no other purpose than to intimidate).
I’m not entirely sure what Nunes expects out of this. The troll accounts – “Devin Nunes’ Mom” and “Devin Nunes’ Cow” – are obviously just that. Only someone hypersensitive to criticism would find them distressing enough to file a lawsuit and claim damages.
Most of the time, accounts that are built solely to troll are ignored or blocked by the person being trolled. You don’t file a lawsuit, or raise awareness about their presence, because you don’t want them getting more attention than they deserve.
As for Liz Mair, the only non-anonymous target besides Twitter here, there are probably dozens of politicians who could have filed a similar lawsuit at any time in order to try to shut her up. She definitely won’t shut up, and a whole host of Nunes’ critics will come to her aid as a result of this. Nunes is just hurting himself here.
And that’s not just because he’s bringing attention to the people that were mocking him, but because he is making himself look like the exact type of person all of his critics, including those being sued, said he was: a child and a hack, all bark and overly-sensitive to what others say about him.
This is just a dumb lawsuit, but it’s a scary one in that there are undoubtedly going to be people who would like to cheer him on, completely ignorant of the fact that baseless lawsuits meant to intimidate private citizens are exactly the type of thing conservatives should be against.
Should be. But we are now firmly wedged into the era of cults of personality. There is no time for principled ideology when you have a politician to defend.
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